The Pickford Bros, developers of BAFTA nominated iOS game
Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, are releasing prototypes of brand
new game concepts within their critically acclaimed puzzle game,
and are asking for feedback from players.

Players of Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint can now try out two new
prototypes - fast paced jumping play-control experiment 'I Sent My
Monkey To The Moon', and radically redesigned gravity-based game
mode 'Squish' - both contained within the latest update, available
for download from the App Store.

"This is the future of original game development!" gushed
designer John Pickford. "We can try out new game concepts by
presenting them to our audience, gauging reaction, soliciting
feedback, and building anticipation for their eventual release," he
continued, "and that's miles better than making games in private
and only releasing them to the world once they're finished, which
was what we had to do in the past."

Prototypes are available now to all players who've purchased the
Skeleton Key within Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint. They are
playable works-in-progress, cleverly making use of existing code
and assets to avoid bloating the size of the download. Each
prototype may then be developed into a new game mode within
Blueprint, or a complete stand-alone game, or may even be abandoned
altogether if the concept doesn't resonate with the audience.

"By making prototypes available the moment they're playable
we're offering players an insight into how original games are
designed, and how they change and evolve during development," added
co-designer Ste Pickford, "and having players involved and engaged
at this stage of the process allows them to give us feedback at the
earliest opportunity, guiding and influencing the way the finished
games turn out. We're not precious about our prototypes
though - as game designers we regularly try out risky new ideas. If
they don't work we'll abandon them, but if players respond
positively then we'll know we're going in the right direction."

The Pickford Bros intend to turn Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint
into an 'incubator' for new game concepts, making use of the
painless update facility of Apple's App Store to regularly try out
new ideas and game concepts, and give players a taste of new
products ahead of release, similar to the way in which popular
novels often include a teaser chapter from the next book in the
series.

"A lot of indie developers are finding innovative ways to
develop games with audience participation, from releasing games at
the beta stage, like Minecraft, or following the 'fail fast and
early' model of social games," continued Ste. "Our 'incubator' plan
is to make Blueprint an essential product that's downloaded onto
every gamer's iPhone or iPad, not just because it's a great game in
itself, but because it offers players a unique opportunity to
become involved in the design of future video games."

"Already we've had valuable feedback since the release of the
first two prototypes," enthused John, "and we plan to update
Blueprint again in the next few weeks with some great enhancements
for both, inspired by the comments we've received. We see the
prototypes as living, breathing, works in progress - games that are
being developed in the public eye. Later in the year we plan
to start prototyping one or two completely new concepts, which will
appear first in Blueprint."

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint was nominated in the Best Mobile
& Handheld category of the prestigious 2012 BAFTA awards and
was nominated for a Pocket Gamer 2012 Most Innovative Game award.
The game also earned second place in the Puzzle Game category
of the 148apps.com 2011 Best App Ever Awards, has been named one of
the 100 Greatest Apps Of All Time by Tap! Magazine, was crowned App
Madness Tournament Champion in September, received a Gold Medal
award from Pocket Gamer, and has secured a Metacritic rating of
81.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint is published by Zee-3 as a
universal app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices, and is
available on the App Store as a free download.

ENDS

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